I had to go home with the flu today. And guess what I found in my mailbox? If you guess 'a begging letter with a 'magic hankie' in it,' you win.

Looks like these folks did a huge mailing of them all over the country. Mine said 'resident', so I know that I didn't end up on somebody's beggarlist.

I'll bet their bank account is really hurting- that thing weighs a lot more than a standard first class letter.

But I digress. I noted two posts about these things, and while the commentary about them in the first post ranged from amusing to outrageous, it really doesn't have anything to do with the main purpose of this community. I came close to deleting them, but decided that there was too much amusing and insightful commentary in them to do so. Just stay away from bashing, please.

I could go into a long diatribe about magical objects and their proper preparation or another equally long diatribe about how ultimately useless and downright silly and even sacrilegious such things are, but I am certain that the collective brainpower in this board could come up with arguments for both sides.

I have several new mods on board learning the ropes. This is an excellent exercise for all of us- and the guiding question should be: How does this tie in with the real purpose of this community? Is this something that could be better snarked about on our own journals? Is it necessary to bunnyhunt the resources? I don't think so. I am sure they'll get all sorts of backlash- and a pile of money from the gullible and superstitious.

There will always be religiously spattered 'outreach' to the weak and vulnerable. I personally think that things like this are a travesty of what Christ taught, and if he has one of these silly, poorly created things, he's drying tears with them. His words are being used to exploit the very people who should be helped. That church could do a lot more good by sending out offers to come to classes about financial (and reality) management, not offering a hokey little quark-attractor.

I'll admit that I am curious: who all got one? Just name your state, or if it has several major cities, your city. If someone knows what the bulk mail rate is, we could calculate how much money this organization wasted sending out magic hankies rather than helping the poor like Christ taught.

That is all I want to say about this. It isn't "Christian", that's for sure.